How We Ruined Our Marriage
by kate10011
Summary: Allison Cameron-Chase knew she made a mistake leaving her husband, but instead of running away to a new city she decides to stay and try to fix the mess they have made of their relationship.
1. The List

**How We Ruined Our Marriage**

**Chapter 1  
**

Allison Cameron-Chase knew that she had made a huge mistake the second that the door had closed behind her. But despite this knowledge, something compelled her to keep walking and not return to the comfort and familiarity of her husband's arms. She had been planning on going to her parents house in Chicago but she knows that running away is not going to fix her problems, and for once in her life she actually has an excuse to stay. So instead of heading to the airport, she checks herself into a local motel for the night and takes out her laptop, opening a word document, she begins to write down all the things that she and Chase need to work on.

1. Dibala's death.

a) Why did he do it?

b) Why didn't he tell me sooner?

c) Is this why he stopped being my husband?

2. House.

a) I am not in love with him, Rob still thinks I am

b) Rob is turning into him.

c) He causes problems between us.

d) We use him as an excuse for our problems.

e) Rob doesn't trust me around him.

3. We always fight instead of talking through things.

4. We make excuses for stupid fights.

5. We just ignore problems instead of facing them.

6. He won't talk to me about his dad.

7. Or his Mum.

8. Neither of us thinks the other is ready for a family. But we have never talked about it either.

9. I think I'm ready for a family, he's not.

10. We don't spend enough time together away from work.

11. We use work as an excuse not to work through our problems.

12. I expect him to leave every time we argue.

13. He expects the same of me.

14. I did leave.

15. I don't know if I trust him anymore.

16. I don't think he trusts me.

17. I don't know how to trust him.

18. He was always more sure about this relationship than I was.

19. He doesn't hold me when I'm sad anymore.

20. He forgets to remind me that it's Tuesday.

Reviewing her final list, Alison made a promise to herself that no matter what, she would not go back until she and Chase had worked through every single one of these problems. And that she wouldn't give up on their marriage until they had worked through all of these problems. Printing off her final list, she glued it to the inside cover of her day planner and went to bed, missing the feeling of her husband's arms wrapped around her.

* * *

**One Month Later.**

Everyone at Princeton-Plainsboro hospital knew that Alison Cameron and Robert Chase had been having marital issues; they also knew that she had moved out. Only Cameron knew about the list that she had made the night of their separation. They had successfully avoided each other most of the last month, only exchanging civilities where it could not be avoided. That was until House got a case he for some reason insisted that the two of them both work on. To say the diagnostics department was tense was an understatement.

Later that night the two of them where stuck in the lab running tests for every autoimmune disease House could have possibility thought of off the top of his head. The silence spoke volumes about the state of their relationship. Both of them were currently having a fierce internal debate over whether or not to break the silence, however neither could figure out what they wanted to say. After deciding that talking was pointless, Cameron decided that she had enough time to go and get some dinner before the lack of sleep, nutrients and caffeine caught up with her.

Chase watched his wife leave and wondered if he'd ever work up the guts to say what he needed to say to her. He had so many questions for her, but no idea how to ask them. When her computer chimed he walked around the desk to look at the result, the answer that would prevent them from being stuck here all night. He was about to walk away when he caught sight of her day-planner sitting open on the desk, and couldn't help glance at it. It wasn't a typical Alison Cameron page, usually her day planner was filled with stickers and brightly colored ink, but this one was a single printed page with her neat handwriting in black ink in the top corner. _Reasons You Ruined Your Marriage & Other Things You Have To Fix With Robert._

He stared at it with disbelief, his heart sank with every reason she had listed, he realized then that some of them, most of them even, where his fault. It was just one more reminder that his life had gone to hell in a hand-basket in only a few short months.

"What are you doing?" Ali's shocked voice exclaimed.

"Nothing" He replied, moving swiftly back to his side of the desk.

"I brought you something to eat" She said evenly, leaving food beside him before heading back to her side of the desk, "You read the list didn't you?"

"Can we talk about this?" He asked, approaching her slowly.

"No" She replied, backing away, "There's nothing to talk about right now"

"Nothing to talk about" He repeated angrily, "You have a list of everything that's wrong with our marriage and you don't want to talk about it"

"We have a patient dying and no idea what's wrong with her" She replied, "I think that takes priority right now."

"It's Lupus" He replied, "We need to talk"

"Lupus, it's never Lupus" She said, turning back to her computer and rerunning the test, "I only ran the test to rule it out."

"Trust me, it's lupus" He said, annoyed with her stubborn refusal to talk with him, "Will you just talk to me, please."

"We will talk, I promise" She said, finally meeting his eye, "But right now, we're both busy."

"And how long are we going to be busy for?" He asked, "When are we going to make time to salvage our marriage?"

"That right there is the reason I don't want to talk about this right now" She replied angrily, "You think that one talk will magically solve all our issue but it won't, I still need time and we have a lot of things that we need to talk about, things that are going to take a hell of a lot more than one conversation to solve."

"Then what do you suggest?" He asked, half-seriously, half-sarcastically.

"That you don't give up on me, on us" She says quietly, looking at the floor, "That even though I'm a complete pain in the ass and way more trouble than I'm worth, I don't want us to be over, not now, not ever."

* * *

_Reasons You Ruined Your Marriage & Other Things You Have To Fix With Robert._

1. Dibala's death.

a) Why did he do it?

b) Why didn't he tell me sooner?

c) Is this why he stopped being my husband?

2. House.

a) I am not in love with him, Rob still thinks I am

b) Rob is turning into him.

c) He causes problems between us.

d) We use him as an excuse for our problems.

e) Rob doesn't trust me around him.

3. We always fight instead of talking through things.

4. We make excuses for stupid fights.

5. We just ignore problems instead of facing them.

6. He won't talk to me about his dad.

7. Or his Mum.

8. Neither of us thinks the other is ready for a family. But we have never talked about it either.

9. I think I'm ready for a family, he's not.

10. We don't spend enough time together away from work.

11. We use work as an excuse not to work through our problems.

12. I expect him to leave every time we argue.

13. He expects the same of me.

14. I did leave.

15. I don't know if I trust him anymore.

16. I don't think he trusts me.

17. I don't know how to trust him.

18. He was always more sure about this relationship than I was.

19. He doesn't hold me when I'm sad anymore.

20. He forgets to remind me that it's Tuesday.

* * *

**AN: The reason the list is repasted at the bottom will be clearer next chapter.**


	2. Number 5

**AN: Due to formatting issues with FF, pretend anything that is underlined is struck-through.  
**

**Chapter 2- **

Chase takes a few days to realize that what Cameron told him about their marriage is true. They have issues seeded far deeper than can be resolved in one conversation, it will take weeks, if not months, to work out all there issues. Despite his complete distaste for being away from her, he respects her wishes and keeps as much distance between them as possible. He also knows that he needs time to come to terms with the mess they have made of their relationship, and decide whether it is worth trying to salvage. The latter only took him a few minutes to figure out the answer to: yes, absolutely. Not naïve enough to think that this would be easy, he knew this would take a lot of work from both of them, not only to regain the trust they had broken, or perhaps never had, but to unravel the knots of their miscommunication.

Diligently, he avoids his wife, telling himself that he's doing it for her benefit, because she asked him to and not because he's a coward. In all truth, despite her plea to not give up on them, he doesn't know if she's willing to give their relationship a second chance. Or whether she is willing to spend the time to work out their problems together. Part of him also feels a little like a stalker as he saviors the rare glimpses of her that he allows himself, like watching her eat lunch with 13 or race around the clinic. But then again, he's the only one that knows even though she's laughing with 13 or smiling broadly to her patients, her heart is hurting as much as his.

He's started taking on even higher risk surgeries since the separation, ones he would normally try to avoid if he could. The distraction is welcome, when the outcome is so uncertain, and one wrong move, or one change in circumstance could change the entire outcome, his mind has less time to wander. That is of course until he gets home and notices the crushing reality sets in that she no longer lives there, and she may not ever again.

A low risk surgery was on this afternoon's agenda, that is until he sliced his palm open accidentally with a scalpel, which is how he finds himself in the ER waiting for someone to come and stitch his hand shut.

* * *

It's lucky for Cameron that the ER is relatively quite today, which is a good thing given how distracted she is because of her failing marriage. A nurse hands her another chart and she skims the personal details, a habit from her training by House, straight to the presenting problem, laceration to the palm. Pulling back the curtain she's surprised to see her husband laying casually on the bed, for a second she thinks that he's come to see her, until she sees that he's bleeding all over himself and the bed.

"What happened?" She asks, alarmed and moving quickly to his side.

"I dropped a scalpel" He replies calmly, watching as waves of panic wash over her face, "Don't worry, it was clean. My blood only."

"Let me see" She says, slowly removing the towel, "It's deep, do you want pain killers before or after I wash it out."

"Before" He says, wincing as she touches his palm gently.

She is on autopilot mode right now, as a doctor she's since hundreds, maybe thousands, of lacerations, most even worse than Chase's, but as his wife, there's nothing she wants to do more than to hold him, to kiss him and say that everything will be okay. In the end, her doctor training wins out, she administers pain relief before washing on the cut.

"Why did you drop the scalpel?" She asks, trying to make conversation in the hopes of keeping him distracted from the pain.

"Distracted" He mutters, watching intently as she works.

"By what?" She asks, "What where you thinking about?"

It's an innocent enough question, one that doctors use to make conversation with their patients, well doctors other than House, but the answer is a loaded gun. When he doesn't answer Cameron takes an educated guess and decides that this is not the best conversation for them to be having right now. Instead they stay silent while she finishes the stitches.

"I was thinking about us" He says suddenly as she is apply a bandage. "I was wondering if you were as willing to work through this as I am."

"I want to" She says simply, "I know we can work through this, I haven't given up on us"

"I think we both need to accept that this might be unfix-able" He says quietly, "As much as I want to think otherwise, I don't know if we'll ever make things right."

"But you're willing to try?" She asks, meeting his eye tearfully.

"Yes" He replies, caressing her face for a second with his uninjured hand, "I'm willing to try. You said that I was always more sure about this relationship than you were, but despite the fact I know I won't find anything even close to what I have with you, I also know that this relationship is damaged, maybe beyond the point of repair. And I need you to believe in us at least enough for us to try and fix it."

"I believe you'll be the person sitting beside me when I'm eighty" She replied. "The rest of it I haven't figured out yet, all I know is that this is it for me."

"Then fight for this, don't keep shutting me out and saying you need space or time" He said, slightly angrily, "Actually sit down with me and have a conversation, at least start to fix this."

"One conversation isn't going to fix everything between us" She repeats.

"But it's a start" He rebuts, "I don't expect us to go back to who we where tomorrow, but at least can we try a little harder to get there."

"What if I come over after work?" She suggests, "I'll bring dinner and we'll talk"

"Sounds perfect" He agrees, sitting up slowly, "I'll see you then."

He walks past her and she waits for a minute to collect her thoughts before turning in the opposite direction and heading away, until she hears him call out her name. For a second she thinks he's finally going to remember like he always did after they stopped being friends with benefits, until he says, "Thank-You" and her heart plummets.

* * *

_Reasons You Ruined Your Marriage & Other Things You Have To Fix With Robert._

1. Dibala's death.

a) Why did he do it?

b) Why didn't he tell me sooner?

c) Is this why he stopped being my husband?

2. House.

a) I am not in love with him, Rob still thinks I am

b) Rob is turning into him.

c) He causes problems between us.

d) We use him as an excuse for our problems.

e) Rob doesn't trust me around him.

3. We always fight instead of talking through things.

4. We make excuses for stupid fights.

5. We just ignore problems instead of facing them.

6. He won't talk to me about his dad.

7. Or his Mum.

8. Neither of us thinks the other is ready for a family. But we have never talked about it either.

9. I think I'm ready for a family, he's not.

10. We don't spend enough time together away from work.

11. We use work as an excuse not to work through our problems.

12. I expect him to leave every time we argue.

13. He expects the same of me.

14. I did leave.

15. I don't know if I trust him anymore.

16. I don't think he trusts me.

17. I don't know how to trust him.

18. He was always more sure about this relationship than I was.

19. He doesn't hold me when I'm sad anymore.

20. He forgets to remind me that it's Tuesday.


End file.
